


I'll be by your side as you re-write your story

by KT_knows_everything



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: BAMF Karl Jacobs, BAMF TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Karl Jacobs Needs a Hug, Karl Jacobs-centric, Time Travelling Karl Jacobs, TommyInnit Needs a Hug (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 12:08:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29045895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KT_knows_everything/pseuds/KT_knows_everything
Summary: After spending years and years trying to create the perfect timeline Karl Jacobs stumbles across an anomaly in the main timeline that may be the answer to the problem he's been struggling with...Tommyinnit was never meant to die from a betrayal by Niki Nihachu and Jack Manifold. But what if he does. And what if his death and a little bit of time travelling could save the Dream SMP from destruction. With a little bit of meddling from Karl, he's managed to send himself and Tommy back in time, back to the beginning.
Relationships: Karl Jacobs & TommyInnit, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 22
Kudos: 422





	1. 0 Cannon Lives remaining

**Author's Note:**

> Basically Karl and Tommy re-write history.

The feeling of respawning is always the same, the pain from dying may be different every time but the water heals all wounds. The land of respawn is a void, a lonely, dark, water filled void. The best way to describe it is by comparison; a sensory deprivation tank. The only feeling you experience is that of lying in water. To Tommy it was the worst place imaginable, time passed at the same speed it did in the living world, you would be left alone with only your thoughts for company until you were fully healed. Sometimes you could be unconscious for the first half of your healing as the water dealt with the more severe wounds first and you would be awake while it healed the less life threatening injuries. So spending days or even possibly weeks by yourself was the worst thing ever for Tommy.

The first time he died was trying to run, Eret had betrayed L’manburg and released Dream, George and Sapnap’s fury upon them all. Dream had managed to get a few hits in but it was his eventual trip and fall which got the better of him. It took him just over an hour to respawn. His second respawn took longer, not only was he shot and killed by Dream, but he hit the water beneath Prime Path and succumbed to his injuries underwater. It took a week in the respawn water before Tommy arrived once more in the land of the living.

The respawn water was a universal feeling, everyone who had respawned before said they felt the same thing, but no one living had ever experienced what it was like to finally die, to be erased from the world permanently. The dead knew, obviously, but they can’t talk, for obvious reasons, and those who were fortunate enough to come back as a ghost would refuse to talk about it, but Tommy only knew of one ghost, Ghostbur. And he wasn’t the most reliable source of information at the best of times anyway, and, to be honest, Tommy had never thought to ask his deceased older brother if dying permanently felt the same as respawning.

Tommy wished that he had asked. Because it was an entirely new feeling he felt when died for the final time.

\-----

He was out collecting spruce wood for Sam Nook and Niki said she knew of a perfect place to find some. It had been a while since Tommy had hung out with Niki, being exiled seemed to have that effect on his friendships, and Tommy wasn’t afraid to admit that he had missed her a lot.

It took a while to reach the so-called ‘perfect spot’ and the journey was filled with awkward jokes as Tommy tried to break the tension that filled the air between Niki and himself. Niki was quiet, she refused to acknowledge anything Tommy said to her and even refused to look at him for longer than a few seconds just to check that he was still following her. Before L’manburg, hell, before everything, Niki would’ve at least laughed at one joke he had already made, even if it was out of pity rather than genuine humour.

Even without any reactions to his jokes, Tommy continued his one sided conversation with Niki. To him it was better to be the only one talking than to be surrounded by silence.

Eventually Niki came to a stop,

“Here,” she said, turning around to face Tommy, “This place is covered in spruce trees, you stay here and collect the wood from these trees and I’ll go over somewhere else to get some more.” 

Niki’s voice held no room for complaints, so Tommy just smiled and sarcastically saluted her with an: “Aye, aye Captain,” and set himself off to work.

Seeing that Tommy was busy with his first tree, Niki’s shoulders relaxed and she quickly turned on her heel and left.

Tommy had to give it to Niki, she was right about this place, it was a forest of spruce trees, there was more than enough here to get what Sam Nook needed. He was definitely going to have to thank Niki later, Tommy was certain that his task would’ve taken a whole lot longer without her guiding him here, and he probably would’ve annoyed Tubbo by taking all of the spruce trees surrounding Snowchester.

It was easy for Tommy to fall into a rhythm, the familiar pattern he started helped to block the silence that surrounded him.  
And it was because he was so focused on his task that he didn’t hear it.

Tubbo’s test nuke.

It was only when the ground began to shake and the birds all took to the sky did Tommy notice the fast approaching weapon.

And by then it was too late.

\-----

Tommy woke with a gasp, his body felt as if it was on fire, everything about him burned, but somehow he could not close his eyes and hope to fall asleep. So as the painful burning continued, Tommy was wide awake, eyes heavily unfocused and mind far away from where his spirit truly was, but he was awake.

After what felt like days, Tommy grew used to the pain and for the first time since he died he finally took in where he was.

It had to be the afterlife. The nuke was far too close for Tommy to be able to run and live and, well, he was on his last life. But instead of the water from respawn, the afterlife had nothing. There was nothing. No people. No healing. No walls. No ceiling. No nothing. While respawn was as dark as night, the afterlife was white, pure, blinding, painful-to-look-at-for-too-long white, it was like looking at paper in the direct sunlight.

“Hello?” Tommy winced at the sound of his own voice, it sounded rough, probably from disuse or perhaps he died screaming and damaged his vocal chords, either way he didn’t care.

“Is anyone there? Can anyone hear me?”

All that met Tommy’s pleas was his own echo, his words bouncing around the vast empty space he was surrounded by from all sides.

He was alone.

For the first time ever in his life, Tommy missed the silence of respawn, at least with the silence in respawn he would be healing but here? Nothing. Looking down at his hands Tommy noticed that they were red and blistered and glancing past them he saw that his signature red and white baseball t-shirt was more hole than actual material. The skin showing from underneath was patterned similar to his hands, everything about him was red and burnt and blistered, but at least he was whole and not scattered around in multiple pieces. He guessed that was his one blessing from the afterlife, that his spirit wasn’t as mangled as his body was. Well, he didn’t actually know what his body looked like, but he guessed that it would’ve been blown into pieces.

Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks could’ve passed by now, there was no keeping track of time in this place and the isolation and silence that surrounded Tommy made time move slower than ever.

His body still hadn’t healed, he gave up hoping that the pain would diminish and disappear but it never did, at this point the pain from his wounds were the only thing that kept him grounded, without it Tommy feared that his thoughts would soon overwhelm his being and he’d be lost within his mind.

Tommy had created a routine for himself here in the afterlife. It mainly consisted of walking, or running if his injuries would allow it, in whichever direction he felt like and then lying down whenever he wanted to stop. There was no eating, drinking or sleeping in the afterlife, and he was thankful for that. The whiteness of the new world Tommy was now a part of was too blinding to fall asleep in and scavenging for food and water would’ve been impossible.

It was a steady routine and he liked to think that it kept him sane, with nothing else to do in the endless abyss it was the only way to keep himself occupied.

And it was during one of his runs when something happened.

For a split second the white of the afterlife flickered to purple.

Tommy stopped in his tracks, nothing like this had ever happened before, but when nothing happened again for a while he shook himself off.

“Just my eyes.” he mumbled, shaking his head slightly as if he was disappointed in himself and started to run once more.

But then it happened again. Purple, the whole afterlife started to glow a deep purple.

The sudden light change bought Tommy to a sudden stop once more as he hissed in pain and shielded his eyes from the assault of colour. With his eyes shut tight Tommy missed the unearthly glowing teal swirl form in front of him, but he certainly didn’t miss the humming which appeared soon after. His senses were overwhelmed by everything, it was the first thing he’d heard, apart from his own voice, since he died.

Eyes squeezed shut and hand pressed flat over his ears, Tommy missed as the swirl gradually opened up to reveal a darkness that he hadn’t seen in such a long time, he missed as a hand emerged from within its blackened depths. He didn’t miss as the hand grabbed his elbow and pulled him forwards.

His eyes shot open with a gasp, he was unused to touch after being alone for so long, but the blackness that he was being pulled towards hurt his eyes as much as the white did the first time he arrived in the afterlife so they slid shut once more.

Just before he closed his eyes once more he caught a glimpse of a familiar spiral hoodied man.

Then the noise stopped and the hand which had held his elbow in an already tight grip, seemed to get tighter and everything around him seemed to be moving so fast. Too fast for him to cope with and the feeling of nausea was the last thing Tommy knew before he blacked out once more.

\-----

With a loud snap the afterlife returned to its blank white state once more, not a single trace left behind that might tell the story of Tommyinnit.

And silence once more consumed the afterlife.


	2. Karl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't mind me. Just creating my own Karl lore. :)

Growing up Karl knew that his father wasn’t normal, when he was young, not yet a year old, his father would disappear for a few moments before reappearing looking worse than he was before. His father’s short disappearances became something regular, another daily occurrence. But once his younger brother was born four years later, his mother put a stop to that. And that was the origin of The Book, well, not the real origin, but Karl was four the first time he saw it.

The Book was filled with so many stories from all over the timelines, many of the stories written in the depths of the book had been read to Karl and his siblings when they were kids. 

While some children grew up hearing the tales of Sleeping Beauty and The Three Blind Mice, the Jacobs family grew up hearing of the warped and abandoned timelines that were changed over and over to get a happy ending.

The first year of stories that were told had happy endings, but as they started to grow up the stories changed, the final endings of the best timelines stopped being read to the Jacobs children and the forgotten memories of the changed timelines were told instead.

Eventually The Book was used as a way to teach the children of the Jacobs household that every decision they make needs to be the right one, that everything that they say has to be the right thing, every little action they take has to be for the best, because even if the slightest thing changes, it could change the course of the whole world. His father became obsessed over the idea that everything had to be perfect.

But keeping track of everything that you say and making sure every decision was the correct one, just seemed boring to Karl. So while his brothers and sister focused on making sure everything was perfect and pleasing their father, Karl spent his time doing the exact opposite.

Oh, his sister is staying in to study for a test that will most likely allow her to become a healer and do good in the world?

Karl would be outside, throwing mud at her window, hoping that she would open it to shout at him and get her distracted for the rest of the day.

Oh, his older brother is training to fight in the next Mr Beast tournament so he can donate the prize money to a good cause?

Karl would purposely sabotage the parkour set up his dad had built specially for his brother to train on, making it harder by removing many of the blocks.

Oh, his younger brother has started to volunteer at the local food bank to give back to the community? 

Karl would help, well, he’d help but no one would know about it. Karl would mess with his siblings as much as he wanted but food banks were important, so if he was caught sneaking into the staff breakout room nearing midday because he knew his brother had forgotten his lunch, then that was something that was kept strictly between Karl, Jimmy, Chris and Chandler.

And it was thanks to his younger brother for forgetting to pack lunch, that Karl became the fourth member of the Mr Beast crew. Much to the annoyance of both brothers. His father also wasn’t the best pleased but if it kept Karl away from the house and creating chaos there, then he would tolerate him hanging around with his new found friends.

Karl would forever cherish the look on his older brother’s face when he turned up at the next Mr Beast competition. The unbridled anger on his face when he saw him standing in between Chris and Chandler in the spectator’s only section, and when he lost to Boy Jedi and Jimmy revealed that the last and hardest section of the course was created by Karl? It was a memory that Karl would treasure forever, even if he did end up being grounded for two months.

\-----

It was through his friendship with Jimmy that he was introduced to Dream.

Dream was a well known fighter and his manhunts were the stuff of legends and fairy tales, so when meeting him for the first time ever, Karl was a ball of anxious energy.

Karl still had no clue how Jimmy had managed to convince Dream and THE Technoblade to fight, the money was probably incentive enough, but he was over the moon when Jimmy told him the news. It soon became the only thing Karl would talk about, much to the playful annoyance of Chris.

On the day of the fight, thousands, possibly even a million, people arrived at the Beast arena, all wanting to see who would arise as the superior fighter. 

Technoblade won, meaning that Chris now had bragging rights over Karl for an undecided amount of time. But Karl really didn’t care, Jimmy had arranged for him and Chris to be Dream and Technoblade’s cheerleaders respectively and getting to meet and talk to Dream had Karl in a state of euphoria for quite a long time afterwards.

\-----

To Karl’s surprise, Dream kept in contact with him and he was gradually introduced to two of Dream’s friends, George and Sapnap, and soon the four became good friends.

Not too long after befriending the self named Dream Team, did they move away. Dream had managed to get his own private server and while Karl was sad to see them go, Dream did promise that once everything was right and the land was deemed safe, Karl would be whitelisted immediately. 

When relaying the good news to his friends and family he received a mixed bag of responses. Jimmy and Chandler were over the moon for him while Chris spent the first three hours after hearing the news sobbing dramatically into Jimmy’s shoulder saying that his ‘son was finally growing up’ and that Karl was ‘abandoning him’, before finally admitting that he was happy for him and then proceed to threaten him to make sure he would keep in contact.

His siblings' reactions were disheartening, the three were more than happy to see him go, albeit his older brother was extremely annoyed to hear that it was Dream’s own private server he would be moving to. 

Karl’s mother cried when she heard the news, she knew it was coming, Karl had been aching to go and explore a new world, but it didn’t make the situation any less upsetting.

But it was his father’s reaction to his departure that confused Karl the most.

Upon hearing that his third child would be leaving he became even more distant than ever. He would spend hours upon hours down in the basement doing whatever it was he was doing, nobody saw him for more than an hour each day.

It was during the last week before Karl would be moving when his mother insisted that a leaving party should be held. She invited everybody Karl knew. And that wasn’t an exaggeration, everybody Karl knew, ranging from childhood friends he hadn’t seen in almost a decade to the local shop employees that Karl had said less than a word too. 

The party itself was actually quite fun, not that Karl would admit to it. His mother had embarrassed him in front of the entire neighborhood by printing out copies of his baby photos and hanging them up all over the house. 

But as the guests finally started to leave and his sister had dragged their tipsy almost drunk mother back upstairs to her bed, his father emerged from the basement. The first time he had been seen all day. 

Upon seeing that Karl was alone, he beckoned him over before disappearing down the stairs to the basement once more.

Shocked by what had just happened, Karl stood awkwardly at the doorway to the basement. The basement was the one place where nobody, under the penalty of three months of being grounded and a month of everybodies chores, would ever venture. It was the one place where the father of the Jacobs household would go to get away from his family. So being welcomed into his fathers personal sanctuary was something Karl had never expected, not in a million years.

He must have taken too long to move, as his father had reappeared at the top of the stairs once more and pulled Karl downstairs, only stopping to tell Karl to shut and lock the door behind him.

\-----

It was that same night when Karl learnt more about his father than he ever knew before.

His father was a time traveller.

It was something that was passed down through the generations.

Some great ancestor from long ago had found a little piece of magic in the form of a crystal. 

And the crystal was now The Book.

His father smiled as he tried to explain to Karl the history of The Book, but when it became alarmingly clear that Karl still had no clue what was going on his father decided that the only way to get Karl to understand is to just show him instead.

With a strange look in his eyes, Karl’s father stepped around his son and walked towards the bookshelf, lined along the wall behind Karl, then as if by pure coincidence, his father pulled The Book from the shelf.

The Book looked the same as it had always been, old, leather bound, with a clasp wrapped around the book as an extra layer of protection, though Karl was never quite sure what protection The Book could need, in his eyes it was just a book.

Eyes shining with an emotion Karl hadn’t seen his father possess since he was young, the clasp was undone and The Book was being thoroughly examined, his dad hunting for something still unknown to Karl at this moment.

For a while the only sound heard in the basement of the Jacobs household was of pages being frantically turned and undistinguishable mumblings coming from the eldest in the room.

Eventually what was being sought after was found and Karl’s father once more beckoned him to come closer. Curious as to what his old bedtime story book had to do with anything, Karl stepped behind his father and watched in awe as the words on the page started to glow and then swirl.

After that everything seemed to have happened in the blink of an eye. One second Karl was watching as the words on the page started to move and the next the room was glowing purple and he was pulled into a black void.

Turns out that his father had decided to let him watch the history of The Book.

Karl watched in stunned silence as history relived itself in front of him.

From the accidental discovery of the crystal and the first ever person to time travel to the transfer of the crystal into The Book (a process of grinding the crystal down and making paper from scratch with the crushed crystal being a part of every handmade page). It was fascinating, horribly nauseating (‘First time travelling usually has that effect’ his father explained), but fascinating.

Then as quickly as the father son duo entered the book, they left.

They were spat back out downstairs in the basement once more, and the clock hanging on the wall opposite all the books showed Karl that barely three minutes had passed from the moment they entered The Book.

Turning to face his dad, Karl was met with a small wooden bucket being thrust into his hands. Karl looked confused for a second, before his face drastically paled and threw up in the bucket held within his grasp.

Once he had finished emptying his stomach, Karl looked up at his father once more and summed up his confusion in one word:

“What?”

A soft laugh and sparkling eyes met Karl as he was led towards the only chair in the basement.

“I’ll explain.”

\-----

And for the first time ever, the father and son sat down together and connected with each other.

Karl’s father told him everything: the adventures that he had been on, how many timelines he had saved from the destruction of the the people within the server, how time travel affects the body, how many reruns he’s had to do, how many people he’s met and befriended, how many enemies he’s made, how much strain time travel places on the shoulders of the holder.

It was daunting.  
His father had saved over 50 different timelines from destruction.

Most only took around ten reruns to be the best it could ever be, the longest took almost 100 tries.

Explaining the strain that travelling in time has on the body seemed to age his fathers face. His father told him that while his body is in its mid fifties, his mind is much older than that, with his age leaning more towards the higher end of the 200’s. His mind will always be older than his body, and that’s why his memory is so bad, nobody could ever hold the memories of 200 years of history.

“Why are you telling me this?”

With a small sad smile the eldest approached his son and pulled him up from the chair and into a hug.

“I put too much pressure on all of you kids, trying to make sure things are perfect, you were the only one to not listen, and yet you have already become greater than they ever will be. I owe them an apology too, they can’t handle failure. The pressure of being a time traveller is the fact that you have no clue if plans will work until you try them, and trials are important, you’ve learnt from your mistakes and know what not to do again, your siblings haven’t. They’ve learnt from you. They know what not to do because you tested the boundaries and learnt that to keep me happy, they do the opposite of you.” The eldest was soft spoken as he opened up to his son, keeping him tight within a much needed hug.

Pulling away, he continued,

“Which is why I’m giving you this,” without Karl noticing his father had picked up The Book from the table which it was laid on and was now holding it out in front of him, offering it to Karl for him to take.

“You remind me so much of myself. I used to be so much like you, but the timeline that took me longest to perfect changed me. Promise me Karl, promise me that no matter how long it may take you to help and keep people happy, you don’t lose yourself, don’t forget who you are.”

As Karl’s vision blurred with unshed tears, he took the book from his fathers hand and placed it gently back down on the table before launching himself into his fathers arms once more, sobbing loudly into his shoulder. His father clung just as tightly back, his own tears dampening his son's hoodie.

\-----

After the emotional heart to heart, the last few days Karl spent at home, he spent exclusively with his father. Both of them making up for lost time, literally.

Karl’s father was adamant about the fact that The Book may now belong to Karl but he did not know how to use it yet. The pair spent many hours down in the basement, one teaching and the other learning. Karl had yet to actually travel through time and not just view history like he already had, his father insisted that the first time time travelling is something that has to be done alone. Apparently there are a few things that Karl needs to experience first hand rather than the explanations that his father had been providing.

But as the days left become mere hours, the eldest Jacobs deemed Karl well versed in the theoretical side of time travel.

Standing at the front door of his once house with bags packed with everything needed, Karl gave out the last goodbye hugs to his family. 

Just when he was about to step out of the door, a loud cough stopped him in his tracks and he turned around once more and came face to face with his father holding out The Book with a slightly exasperated look on his face.

“How did you forget?”

A wet laugh escaped Karl’s mouth and he lent forwards to retrieve The Book from his father’s awaiting hands.

“Good luck son.”

With a small nod Karl finally turned from his family and exited his old house.

\-----

The trip through the server portal and into the Dream SMP was an easy one, the only problem he encountered along his way was a very large group of people waiting at the exit to the land he was once a part of.

Front and centre of the group waiting for him to arrive was the Beast squad. It turned out that Chris couldn’t keep a secret to save his life and had accidentally revealed that Karl would be leaving during one of his shifts at the food bank, and word spread quickly.

Karl had seriously underestimated the fanbase he had gained from working with Jimmy and it seemed to Karl that the entire world was there to watch him leave.

It took over an hour for Karl to make his way through the hoard of people camped outside of the portal and eventually Jimmy had to call in for help and the security usually stationed at the Beast Arena to help them control the adoring fans, and allow Karl and the crew to approach the portal and say their goodbyes to each other.

After promising multiple times to keep in frequent contact with the entire crew and promises to still help design parkour builds and occasionally participate, his friends let him go.

Passing through the hub and entering his whitecard into the Dream SMP portal Karl finally made it.

\-----

For a short while it was fun. 

Karl was over the moon to see his old friends and happy to meet the others on the server. Sapnap told him everything about the land, where to find different biomes, the recent history created. Sapnap also told them about the people and the seemingly ever growing country of L’manburg.

The people seemed nice. Eret and Punz helped him with his first build (Hutt’s Pizza) and many people helped him get to know his surroundings.

Well, most of the people seemed nice. L’manburg interested Karl. He wanted to know more, but he couldn’t just history travel (as he had taken to calling the times when he would watch his families adventures in the past), he wasn’t part of the history so it would require an actual journey and Karl wasn’t quite sure if it would be a good idea to go back a short distance and potentially be caught.

But when asked if he could possibly join, Karl was swiftly sent away. He was apparently ‘too American’.

And Karl’s interest in L’manburg stopped there and then.

He was happy enough to keep himself to himself, spend time meeting and getting to know everyone outside of L’manburg.

It wasn’t long at all until Karl was pulled into his first conflict on the server.

He had heard about the Pet War from Sapnap, Karl had just missed that by a day, but some guy called Fundy appeared out of L’manburg and Karl suddenly realised that the Pet War was far from over, but this time he was part of it.

Well, he wasn’t a big part of it, but he was still part of it, fighting beside Sapnap.

It wasn’t anything too drastic but it was a lot more intense than anything Karl had been a part of before.

Karl thought it was over. That everything on the server was just a lot of little petty fights, nobody had told him the history of L’manburg, nobody told him that the people of L’manburg were already down a life and that the youngest on the server was on his last one already.

The conflicts kept coming.

One after another.

And Karl’s first run of the server ended with a bang.

He had just about managed to escape the blast zone, hanging on to his first life by sheer will power only.

So he re-did his first run.

He went back and destroyed the button.

It worked, but the slight peace Karl had created didn’t last for long.

There was always something that would go wrong.

And Karl would just keep going back and change one little thing to make a new timeline. Hoping that each time would be the last time.

It never was.

But Karl had hope for this one, number 305. He stopped getting attached to the timelines after the fiftieth one. By then seeing the timelines in the void was easy, he spent more time in the void then he did in the world. It became his home.

The void was a black space where all time could be seen, everything in the void happened at the same time,the past, the present and the future all happened simultaneously. It took a lot of effort to teach himself how to read the timelines that were ever present in his new home, but it was worth it in the end.

The timelines were the only source of light in the void, each branch glowed a dull white and all the branches were spread along the void like a chain of fairy lights. All branches were linked at some point along the way, all stemming from one decision with consequences and new decisions overlapping. It was a mess.

Karl spent ages studying the timelines, visiting each different decision everyone made, from Schlatt not exiling Wilbur and Tommy from L’manburg to what Tubbo wanted to eat for breakfast that day. Karl finally understood why his father was so hung up about decisions and he could see why it would be so easy to lose yourself in trying to make the ‘right’ one every time.

He would put himself into the narrative in the hopes that if he fights on one side and not the other things would be better, he switches sides every time. Clinging on to the hope that at some point he has to be fighting for the right side. His hope was pointless.

No matter what he did, no matter how much he tried to change the outcomes of the decisions nothing ever seemed to work.

He removed the button.

Wilbur still blew up L’manburg, just at a later date.

He stopped Schlatt from winning the election by rigging the vote.

Wilbur still went mad.

He managed to get Technoblade whitelisted earlier.

The wither attack still happened.

He didn’t let Tubbo become president.

Quackity went off the rails, if Schlatt was a dictator and Wilbur was insane, then Quackity had managed to combine the two worst traits of the dead presidents to become a whole new level of evil.

Nothing seemed to work.

So Karl stayed in the void.

He made plans, kept track of little decisions, tried to keep order, thought up countless possibilities about what could happen.

But eventually all hope runs thin, and Karl eventually gave up.

The Dream SMP was doomed from the start, but Karl didn’t want to go home, his father had saved so many worlds and so many people and yet he failed on his first one. Karl stayed in the void.

\-----

Time doesn’t exist in the void but if Karl had to guess, he would say that he had been in there for a good month now, the need for anything in the void wasn’t there, he didn’t need to eat or drink, he didn’t need anything, it suited Karl fine.

Karl had spent ages just letting himself float around the void meaninglessly, it was easy to get lost in the soft glowing lights that surrounded him, he was deep into his mind when a little light started to glow red.

He didn’t notice for ages, oblivious to the change in colour due to the vastness that surrounded him from all directions.

But when the red started to deepen and shine brighter than any of the other timelines, Karl finally spotted it.

Karl was confused. Nothing like this had ever happened. He hadn’t seen anything like it, and without thinking about any potential consequences Karl pulled himself towards the red timeline and materialised himself within it.

\-----

Karl watched from above as Niki led Tommy towards a certain area, dread pooled in his stomach, he could tell that something was off, but he wasn’t sure what it was.

He watched as Niki ran away and as the nuke came down, and he saw the look of resignation on Tommy’s face as he noticed the incoming projectile. 

As much as he wanted to, Karl couldn’t interfere, he was only viewing the timeline.

When the explosive finally hit, the entire world glitched and a loud ringing assaulted Karl’s ears. Bringing his hands to his ears Karl was flung backwards out of the timeline and into the void once more.

It was a glitch.

The whole world ended when Tommy died.

Of course Karl had seen timelines where Tommy had died before, but Tubbo or sometimes even Technoblade avenged his death, so what was different about this time and why was Tommy so important. And where would this Tommy’s spirit be. Surely a glitch would cause his death to not be logged in the afterlife, especially if it was never meant to happen.

A plan formed in Karl’s head, and he knew he only had one chance at this.

One chance to save it all.

To save everything.

And by God was Karl going to make it happen.

\-----

The plan was simple enough.  
Go back into the timeline and travel forwards an hour in that same timeline and see what lays beyond.  
Hopefully if he wasn’t ejected once more he could try to find Tommy’s spirit, and once he found it he could bring it back through the portal and into the void.

And the plan worked.

The second Karl re-entered the glitched timeline he opened The Book and sent himself one hour into the future of the world. The portal took its sweet time re-opening but it eventually materialised.

Squinting into the glitched world, Karl spotted Tommy, just a few metres away from the portal he had just opened. He looked bad, burn scars covered the entirety of his body, his clothes were almost non-existent and he looked far too thin, but his spirit was still here, in some sort of corporal form.

Tommy hadn’t noticed him, his eyes were closed and his hands almost seemed to be permanently glued to his ears, with Tommy’s reaction Karl could safely say that Tommy had been stuck in this glitch for longer than the hour Karl had thought he had been in, and he took it upon himself to step out of the portal and guide Tommy by the elbow into the portal.

The sudden touch must’ve shocked Tommy as his eyes opened suddenly, but they were shut just as quickly accompanied by a small whimper of pain.

Karl’s heart broke. He wasn’t too sure if the noise Tommy made was because of the pain his body was in due to his burns or his senses being overwhelmed by everything. Either way Karl made a silent promise to the boy he was trying to save, a promise to help and protect him. If everything in the plan worked then Tommy could save the Dream SMP, but Karl would not let him face it alone.

Once the pair was surrounded by the void, Karl closed the portal and reached for one light. One timeline which had become the trunk of the tree that was all the timelines, the one point in the Dream SMP where everything was fine and decisions didn’t lead to tyranny and anarchy.

If he landed right then Tommy’s spirit would latch itself onto his old body, drawn in by the matching DNA and hopefully, hopefully, the spirit of the glitched ending of Tommy would be stronger than the younger version of himself and could take control of the body.

Karl prayed that the Tommy he was with was strong enough as they finally made it to the exact moment that would take them back. Looking back at Tommy one last time, Karl grabbed hold of the light and opened a portal once more and pulled them both through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short note.
> 
> History travel or whenever Karl is just viewing something is like the Beach Episode or The Village That Went Mad, where Karl is there but can't interact.
> 
> Time Travel is where Karl has put that version of himself into the timeline and he can interact like the Masquerade episode.
> 
> I also had to get rid of the Inbetween (even though it is awesome), so have a void instead.


End file.
